Talon Gates of Madara bug — The last activated ability of [[Talon Gates of Madara]] can't be activated even with enough…

[matthewevans]

Reported in Discord: https://discord.com/channels/1485498006781427802/1504408428582535288/1504408428582535288

Thread: Talon Gates of Madara bug
Cards: talon gates, talon gates of madara
Parser status: has_gaps
Extraction confidence: 0.90

Summary

The last activated ability of [[Talon Gates of Madara]] can't be activated even with enough mana available.

---

_{report_id: discord:1504408428582535288:1504408428582535288:0 · discord: 1504408428582535288/1504408428582535288}

[matthewevans]

Triage investigation

Card data export shows three activated abilities parsed:

1. {T}: Add {C} ✓
2. {1}, {T}: Add one mana of any color ✓
3. {4}: Put this card from your hand onto the battlefield — activates only while in hand.

Two possible interpretations of the report:

(a) Reporter means the literal third ability and is trying to activate it while Talon Gates is on the battlefield. That ability is hand-only — once it's a permanent, this is correct rules behaviour (CR 113.6: an activated ability functions only while the object is in the zone its ability functions in). Worth confirming the ability prints/shows as unavailable rather than being silently absent.

(b) Reporter means "third counting the ETB-trigger", i.e. the {1}, {T}: any color mana ability. If that's the case it's a real bug — possibly cost-validation rejecting {1}, {T} when the land is already tapped or when {1} is being paid via this same land.

Starting points: ask reporter to clarify which ability via the screenshot; meanwhile crates/engine/src/ai_support/legal_actions.rs for activation eligibility per zone, and game/casting_costs.rs for the {1}, {T} composite-cost validation.

[matthewevans]

Fixed in 7eea269ad. Root cause: {4}: Put this card from your hand onto the battlefield parsed with activation_zone: None, which the runtime activation gate defaults to Battlefield — so the card sitting in hand could never satisfy the zone check and the ability was rejected. activation_zone_from_self_cost derived the zone only from the ability cost, never from a self-ChangeZone effect. Fix adds the effect-side companion activation_zone_from_self_effect (walks the typed Effect tree for a self-move-to-battlefield from a non-battlefield zone). Talon Gates' ability now carries activation_zone: Hand. Class fix — covers graveyard-recursion lands, hand-cast permanents, exile returns (CR 113.6m). Parser + runtime tests incl. a graveyard-origin generalization case; clippy/test-engine/card-data green.